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Around the World, Eyes Are Fixed on the Final

Fans erupted when Andrés Iniesta broke loose with a blistering goal late in extra time against the Netherlands.Credit
Andrea Comas/Reuters

Soccer fans the world over gathered in groups large and small to watch Sunday's World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands, the 64th and last game of the monthlong tournament in South Africa. Reporters from The New York Times were on hand to capture some of the color.

AMSTERDAM In a city legendary for partying, by 5 p.m., still three and a half hours before the match, the Heineken flowed under a blue sky and a hot sun. Many tens of thousands of people were already on the Museumplein, near the city's famous museums, where as many as 100,000 people were expected to watch the match on giant television screens. The most striking thing here is the orange, the Dutch national color. Almost every person on the street was decked out in some kind of orange outfit.

Fans on boats motored through the canals of the city, music blaring and shouting out support for their team. The sidewalks were dangerous for pedestrians as the start approached, as Amsterdam's notorious bicyclists raced to their appointed viewing sites, rarely making allowance for the fact that the sidewalks could not handle the crowds.

BERLIN As the teams tested each other on the field, the divided crowd on the Fan Mile in the German capital tested their loyalties. They cheered both teams politely, tentatively rather than with abiding passion, torn between appreciation for the beautiful Spanish game and a bit of revenge against Germany's ouster in the semifinal.

It was a wonder anyone showed up at all. The city's inhabitants wilted in 99-degree heat. Trips to the many nearby lakes or the Baltic and North Seas, postponed as the German Mannschaft marched to the semifinals, were finally taken. With Parliament's final session before the summer break Friday, the annual exodus out of town had officially begun.

Even with a Falco impersonator rocking Amadeus and reviving the Kommissar once more, the organizers at the Fan Mile had trouble generating the excitement before kickoff that began to build spontaneously with inebriated singing for Germany's afternoon games as well as those at night.

Where a sea of German black, red and gold once greeted the home team, the crowd leaned toward Spain, with red-and-yellow slightly outnumbering the orange supporters.

"Definitely more Spanish," said Tilo Wunsch, 40, who was painting faces at the entrance by the Brandenburg Gate. "You want the better team to win. Look at how they played."

Not all were so forgiving at Spain's second straight booting of the German team after the final of the European Championships two years ago.

As the sun set behind the Victory Column where Barack Obama gave his campaign speech in 2008, Dominik Schwieder, 17, was pulling for Holland.

"Spain threw us out of the tournament again," he said. "Of course the atmosphere is better when Germany plays, but here you have the emotion."

BUENOS AIRES For Argentines, still stinging after their team was knocked out of the Cup by Germany, watching Sunday's final was especially tough considering that their best player, Lionel Messi, is the star of Barcelona, the Spanish club team which had seven players on the Spanish national squad. Even as the coach and Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona anointed Messi his "successor" before the tournament, the striker's goalless performance left many Argentines unsatisfied.

BEIJING At 3:26 a.m., the heavy rain from earlier in the night had dried up at Sanlitun, the rowdiest place in the city. Lighted with street lights bouncing off bright green and red food stall umbrellas, the thin strip of bars and clubs heaved impressively for a damp Sunday night.

"This is Dutch weather, this is a sign: we will win," said Simon Man, a native of the Netherlands.

In 1F, a bar filled with Netherlands fans across the street from Poachers, where fans of the Spanish team were watching the game, Gu Yuqing, 22, said, "The Dutch are known as the uncrowned kings in China."

A vendor in an orange Holland T-shirt was selling vuvuzelas for 20 RMB (about $3) each. "They're all made in Zhejiang, anyways," the vendor said. Commemorative and country specific T-shirts also go for 20 RMB, until a foreigner expressed interest - "50 RMB," the vendor said quickly, but then caved. "OK, OK, they're on clearance now. I'll give it to you for 20."

"Geng Liang, a rival T-shirt vendor next door sighed. Business was not brisk. "We've lost 30,000 RMB this entire World Cup," he said.

BERLIN The tame crowd seemed to know that the party was elsewhere. German fans rued their missed opportunity. Dutch and Spanish supporters had no doubt the parties at home far outstripped the few thousand at the Fan Mile here, where tens of thousands celebrated when Germany took the field.

But perhaps no one felt it as acutely as Anthony Campbell, 21, a student at the University of Cape Town.

"I could be at home and I'll be in Amsterdam tomorrow," said Campbell, South Africa jersey on his back, Dutch flag clutched in his hand.

Curiously, he wore the yellow-and-red lei favored by Spanish fans wrapped twice around his forehead. "I thought it was orange," he said sheepishly. "You can see I'm a bit confused."

Berlin had pleased Campbell more than the long stretch of scoreless play. "I see similarities," he said. "We were a divided country and they were a divided city, both now unified."

"The German people I've talked to are very split between the Dutch and the Spanish," he observed. "I think they like the fact that if Spain wins they lost to the champions." After watching in person as the Spanish played poorly in a loss to Switzerland, he said he was pulling for Holland, lei or no lei.

"If the Dutch win, I think the party will still be going on tomorrow," Campbell said. "I hope so."

BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA A big-screen World Cup viewing in a one-quarter-crowded square turns out to be a strategic place to bring a llama, especially if you're in the business of selling people photographs of their children atop llamas. In fact, several llamas joined the tapestry in Bolivar Square beneath the thick clouds of the cool summer, and one llama even outlasted the others perhaps by some sort of llama stare-down, hanging in with the lollipop vendors, the bubble vendors, the man selling cellular minutes (200 pesos, about 10 cents), the man playing quick capitalist with beer he clearly had just bought and the man selling actual replicas of, yes, the world.

As children scrambled around in the back, a mostly male crowd watched the screen intently but few appeared thoroughly fanatical either way, the scant number of Spain or Netherlands shirts all but matched by occasional sartorial homages to the Houston Astros, University of Minnesota football and the Manchester United shirt seemingly required by international law in any gathering.

Finally, at 90 minutes, the match still goalless with the broadcast screaming about the tension, the lingering llama had coped by fleeing to the edge of the square to lie down and look away, proving he's no octopus.

BUENOS AIRES Late in the second half, David Villa's shot from point-blank range went too high. In a bar in the trendy La Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Gabriel Bordallo, 7, slammed his plastic place mat three times on the table in frustration. His mother, Andrea Bordallo, reached over, smiling, and caressed his face, trying to calm him down.

"Spain will win, it just has to," said Gabriel, a Mendoza resident who was with four other family members.

"Both these teams deserve to be here," said Mrs. Bordallo just after regulation time ended. "Their defenses, their attacking, their tactics, are all excellent. This is a wonderful game, a fitting end to the tournament."

But looking on, another son, Juan, 12, revealed the quiet pain the Argentines were feeling in pulling for Spain, which has seven members from Barcelona who play the kind of fluid soccer Argentina's team aspired to. "All they are missing," Juan said, "is Messi."

DAKAR, SENEGAL The crowd was solidly for Spain outside Mohammed Fall's electronics store in the Ouakam neighborhood here, and the reason was obvious.

"Of course we support Spain; a lot of our brothers are up there," said Philippe Foromo Balamon, who had gathered on the dusty sidewalk with several dozen other neighborhood men to watch the match on Fall's flat screen TV.

Africa wasn't in the final, but Spain, a country close in Senegal's mental universe, was a reasonable substitute. Hundreds of young Senegalese men have made the hazardous crossing in flimsy boats in search of work; Spain, like France and the United States, is a place jobless West Africans aspire to. "We've all got friends and relatives up there," Bara Ndiaye said.

Like the others he works the market in the bustling working-class neighborhood, but the vendors were quiet Sunday evening. The stalls selling T-shirts, mangoes, brassieres, potatoes, peanuts, bananas, dried fish, canned tomatoes and auto parts weren't doing much business; serious business was at hand, and Fall, with his excellent semi open-air screen, had cornered it.

Intently perched on plastic chairs, a wooden bench, or simply standing, the men cheered when Spain closed in and hissed softly when the Netherlands appeared to press forward. There wasn't much talking. The little talibés - small children who beg on behalf of religious leaders, a distinctive and deplored feature of the Senegalese landscape - were sitting on their begging bowls in the front of the crowd, joking and pushing.

The Spanish goalie deflected a shot. The crowd cheered softly. In a dusty courtyard next door, drums sounded for the gathering of a women's social club. A horse-drawn cart passed, carrying construction materials. A man pushed a wheelbarrow of mangoes up the street.The crowd at Fall's leaned forward, hoping Spain would score. "Spain is just up there, right close to Africa," said Fall, a former New York City cab driver, pointing upward slightly with his thumb. "And, we have a lot of our Senegalese in Spain," he added.

BUENOS AIRES After 116 minutes, Spain's goal sent Gabriel Bordallo, 7, leaping onto a high table, where he did a little dance while his family members, Argentines from Mendoza, cheered on from below.

AMSTERDAM As Andrés Iniesta broke loose with a blistering goal late in extra time, sealing the undermanned Netherlands' fate, about 100,000 Dutch fans simultaneously exhaled in despair. They kept cheering on their team but seemed to accept that defeat was inevitable.

There was silence as the match ended, but then the Dutch applauded their team for a job almost well-enough done.

"We played a better match, but we still lost," Janwillem Jakobs, 29, said. "In the first half, Spain was a little better."

Jakobs, a logistics manager for a vending company who came to Amsterdam from his town of Barneveld, said the disappointing thing is that "this is the third time we've played in the final and the third time we've lost."

But he predicted the Dutch team would remain a force in soccer for some time to come, because the team has talented young players.

Not known for missing a good opportunity for a celebration, Amsterdamers turn the night into a second-place party.

BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA 3:56 p.m., Bogota: "Seis! Cinqo! Cuatro! Tres! . . ." A Colombian broadcaster's feverish voice blared through Bolivar Square, and the gathered multitude helped him count down toward added time as he thundered about the history of it all. Then, with Spain's Cup secured, the people clapped briefly and quickly filed out. They had come to appreciate the futbol, and they had stood under the growling clouds and the towering green mountains laughing often at the number of times they inhaled for prospective Spanish goals that didn't happen.

Now, as some stray bubbles from the bubble vendors floated above, they exited in their sweaters and coats as the llama lay near the edge of the square and dined on what appeared to be corn husks. Regarding the outcome, a sole man in a Spain shirt said he did feel surprised.

PARAMOUNT, CALIF. For the first time in nearly four hours, it was so quiet you could hear a herring drop.

All morning and afternoon, the Holland Soccer Club, tucked away in an industrial park in southeast Los Angeles County, had been a warehouse filled with sights (everyone clad in Oranje), smells (krokets, Heineken and uitsmijter - a sort of Egg McMuffin) and sounds (cheers, groans and Hup! Holland! Hup! chants) of all things Dutch.

Now, though, after Iniesta's goal had put Spain ahead, there were only blank stares of disbelief, halfhearted pleas for an offside call that lasted only as long as the play, and ...

Quiet.

It was as if the 250 people who had packed the room realized that they were destined once again to be experience something else that is uniquely Dutch - second place.

BEIJING A goal. Finally. Even in 1F, where fans of the Dutch team gathered, the crowd screamed and cheered in excitement. Outside, the sky was a light blue-gray. The sun was up. The bar housing the Spanish fans cheered through the rest of the game, nonstop. Spectators began leaving their tables in front of the two large screens outside of Red Club. Many stood up to stretch. Spanish cheering and singing echoed down the entire street. A slow clap started around the two large screens. "This was pretty rubbish" said Mukesh Desai.

"It's over?" someone said hopefully.

"It's over," someone replied in relief.

Half the street emptied in minutes. People bolted from their tables, leaving dozens of empty beer bottles and baskets of popcorn behind. It was full morning now. The T-shirt vendors folded and wrapped up their merchandise. Two fans wearing bright orange engaged in a consolatory make-out session while Spanish fans moved down the street, chanting and singing.

BOGOTÁ, COLOMBIA Before the spiffy Palace of Justice that replaced the one that lay in ruins after the infamous siege in Colombia's bad old days of 1985, the cheer for Iniesta's goal did not contain fervency. It sounded more appreciative than raucous. It came from a thousand-strong throng riveted to a TV screen in Bolivar Square; it came from the giddily promising Colombia of 2010; and it came from a neutrally dressed group wearing muted colors on a gray day and tilting allegiance gently toward Spain, colonization being so very 1800.

People who had sat all afternoon on concrete stood, and people who had put hands to head at Spain's near-goals smiled, and a relentless vendor still burrowed through hauling the tower of pink cotton candy that had gotten him booed when he fleetingly blocked the screen. Back amid the square, Mr. Bolivar looked hardy as ever in his statued perch; he did, after all, marry Spanish. He didn't even seem to mind that he had a pigeon on his head.

BUENOS AIRES After the game ended, Jaime Sifuentes, squeezed his wife tightly at a bar.

"Spain played its game, and it paid off," said Sifuentes, 52, a Colombian on vacation in Argentina. "They were patient, and the goal came. Holland defended well against Brazil and Uruguay, but you can't win like that forever. This is justice. Spain deserved this."

As if in conjunction with the final whistle, the lights in the dark warehouse were turned on and the doors opened, forcing everyone to squint as they emptied into the fresh afternoon air. There was disappointment that Holland had lost - for the third time in a World Cup final - but also the realization that Spain was the better team. "I'm not impressed," said John Vandereems, 78, and dressed in an orange tie and wooden clogs. "We hardly ever have the ball."

But within 10 minutes, the frowns had been turned around. Groups of 5, 10 or 20 posed for photographs and exchanged hugs in the parking lot. It was a reminder what the Holland Soccer Club, formed in 1957, is about. Yes, it is about soccer - it has fielded teams in local leagues, some semi-pro - but it is really about sharing their culture.

That many Dutch settled in this area after World War II would not seem to be an accident. This is a vast flood plain, with the levee of the Los Angeles River just a mile to the west, and before suburbia encroached was once the domain of dairy farms. But there may have been a more culturally intrinsic reason the Dutch settled here, said Andre Sprong, a former president of the club.

"The Dutch have deep pockets and short arms, and the land was cheap," he said. "So it worked perfectly."

BERLIN The Spanish fans danced and waved their flags. The Dutch supporters walked with heads bowed, some kicking the plastic cups crumpled on the Berlin asphalt along with their hopes.

The remaining thoughts of Germans turned to an aquarium in the city of Oberhausen, and a creature with twice as many appendages as anyone on the field. The octopus had done it again.

Paul the Oracle, the octopus who predicted every German victory and defeat, also picked Spain to triumph over the Netherlands in the final.

"It's a little scary, frankly," said Heiko Steffens, who along with his wife wore matching white German jerseys. "When such a strange animal has a better idea of soccer than any of us, it kind of gives you the creeps."

Germans could take comfort in the fact that they had lost to the ultimate champions, as well as in the knowledge that their young star, Thomas Müller, took home the honor of the golden boot, breaking a tie with the champion Villa and the runner-up Wesley Sneijder with his superior assist tally, a good omen for the future.

Outside the Fan Mile it was peaceful, the honking and popping of firecrackers that followed every German victory had given way to silent thoughts of four years hence, here as across the world, calculating retirement ages, eyeing the ripening youth players, hoping, all with the same words: "Next time."

"We'll win it next time, 100d percent," said Andrea Selin, wearing a black Germany jersey. "Great strikers, great offense, great defense, absolutely,. But not strong enough for Spain.

"I knew they'd beat us and I knew they'd beat Holland," Selin added with great confidence.

Asked how she knew, she tapped a forehead knowingly and said simply, "I paid attention to Paul."